The Ben Shapiro Show - BREAKING: Hunter Biden CHARGED, Pleads GUILTY...NO Jail Time

00:00:00.000 So, Hunter Biden is slated to plead guilty to a couple of misdemeanor charges on taxes and a gun felony, and he will do no jail time.

00:00:09.000 Because that's the way our justice system works, gang.

00:00:12.000 That's the way this all works.

00:00:13.000 What exactly did Hunter Biden do?

00:00:15.000 Well, according to a form that has now been filed by the U.S.

00:00:20.000 attorney, David Weiss, Enclosed.

00:00:23.000 This is a letter to the U.S.

00:00:24.000 District Clerk's Court Office.

00:00:25.000 quote, in a close, please find two information to be docketed in criminal matters involving

00:00:29.000 the above reference defendant. The first information charges the defendant with tax offenses, namely

00:00:34.000 two counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax in violation of 26 U.S. code at 7203.

00:00:39.000 The defendant has agreed to plead guilty to both counts on the tax information.

00:00:42.000 The second information, these are basically the charges, charges the defendant with a firearm offense.

00:00:47.000 Namely, one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance in violation of 18 U.S.

00:00:54.000 Code 922-G3 and 924-A2.

00:00:57.000 The defendant has agreed to enter a pretrial diversion agreement with respect to the firearm information.

00:01:02.000 So in other words, he is going to essentially receive no jail time, and instead, he is going to go on probation for a while.

00:01:08.000 According to the Washington Post, that tentative agreement with federal prosecutors is to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail.

00:01:17.000 Any proposed plea deal would have to be approved by a federal judge.

00:01:20.000 The agreement caps an investigation opened in 2018 during the Trump administration and has generated intense interest and criticism since 2020 from Republican politicians who accuse the Biden administration of reluctance to pursue the case.

00:01:31.000 What is the most likely thing that is happening here?

00:01:32.000 Well, the cynic might say that basically the DOJ is not hitting Hunter Biden with the book.

00:01:38.000 They're basically going out of their way to hit him for a couple of tax infractions and a gun charge in order to avoid delving more deeply into the alleged corrupt scheme that involved Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and Ukrainian money flowing into the Biden family coffers.

00:01:50.000 That would be the very cynical take on this, is this would be a mask, basically.

00:01:54.000 Hunter Biden does no time.

00:01:56.000 Serves a probationary period.

00:01:58.000 Everything is hunky-dory.

00:02:00.000 And we all just go about our business and pretend that the DOJ is absolutely enforcing the law in even-handed fashion.

00:02:06.000 According to the Washington Post, the court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018.

00:02:14.000 The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million in those two years alone.

00:02:20.000 So first of all, that's a lot of money for a misdemeanor tax charge.

00:02:23.000 $1.2 million?

00:02:26.000 And that does raise serious questions as to where is Hunter Biden picking up enough money that he owes a million to to the federal government?

00:02:33.000 That means that somebody was paying him, maybe the Ukrainians, maybe the Chinese.

00:02:37.000 Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation.

00:02:39.000 For those counts, Biden's representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owes.

00:02:43.000 Additionally, Biden plans to admit to illegally possessing a weapon following his 2018 purchase of a handgun.

00:02:48.000 As part of that admission, he expects to be entered into a diversion program, a less punitive form of sentence typically applied to people with substance abuse problems.

00:02:55.000 So, basically, he was doing drugs, and he testified on a form that he is not a drug addict when he obtained the gun.

00:03:01.000 And then, because he was doing drugs, they're saying he didn't know what he was doing, and therefore he's going to be sent to a diversion program.

00:03:07.000 So, I suppose that means everyone who lies on that form, who in fact was a drug abuser, should be sent to a diversion program as opposed to jail.

00:03:14.000 That'd be the even-handed approach, no?

00:03:16.000 In all, prosecutors would recommend two years of probation and diversion conditions.

00:03:19.000 If Biden successfully meets the conditions of the diversion program, the gun charge would then be removed from his record at the end of the period. 0.98

00:03:26.000 The gun purchase that led to the criminal charge happened in late 2018 at a time when by his own telling and his own autobiography, because Hunter's an idiot, he was regularly abusing crack.

00:03:34.000 When he filed out paperwork to buy the gun, he denied using drugs or having a drug problem, exposing him to a potential charge of making a false statement on the document as well as illegal gun possession once he acquired the weapon. 0.92

00:03:43.000 Biden owned the gun for less than two weeks because his then-girlfriend threw it away.

00:03:47.000 Now again, I guess the charges don't include the throwing the gun into a trash can somewhere, which is apparently illegal as well.

00:03:54.000 That is not something that typically you are supposed to be doing, and you will recall that there was a lot more involved than just that.

00:03:59.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

00:04:01.000 The fact is that we are now spending more money than has ever been spent in the history of humanity.

00:04:05.000 It continues year on year.

00:04:06.000 Eventually, that bill is going to come due.

00:04:08.000 Either it's going to come due in the form of higher interest rates that we're currently paying on our bonds, and we're going to have to pay all of that back.

00:04:13.000 And that means we're going to have to either inflate the currency, or we're going to have to increase the taxes.

00:04:17.000 And when that sort of stuff happens, you probably should be diversified out of the American dollar.

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00:05:00.000 Again, that's BEN to 989898.

00:05:00.000 98 right now. Again, that's been to 98 98 98. In fact, according to Politico, going back to

00:05:07.000 March of 2021 on October 23rd 2018, President Joe Biden's son Hunter and daughter-in-law Haley

00:05:12.000 were involved in a bizarre incident in which Haley took Hunter's gun and threw it in a

00:05:15.000 trash can behind a grocery store only to return later to find it gone.

00:05:19.000 The Delaware police began investigating concern the trash can was a cross from a high school, and the missing gun could be used in a crime.

00:05:25.000 But a curious thing happened at the time Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun.

00:05:30.000 and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people.

00:05:33.000 The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that Secret Service officers wanted to destroy the paperwork.

00:05:39.000 The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the paperwork to the ATF.

00:05:43.000 The Secret Service had had no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he had no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.

00:05:52.000 Still mysterious as to what exactly the Secret Service was doing, Lying on the form was, in fact, a felony because the transaction record asks, quote, Are you an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug or any other controlled substance?

00:06:05.000 So I guess they are not filing a charge on the throwing away a gun next to a high school.

00:06:11.000 And we still are not going to get to the bottom of did the Secret Service then go and try and clean up Hunter Biden's problems?

00:06:16.000 Later that day, Haley informed Hunter of what she'd done.

00:06:18.000 He instructed her to retrieve the gun, according to the police report.

00:06:20.000 When Haley returned to the grocery store, she found the gun was missing from the garbage bin and reported the issue to the store.

00:06:25.000 Police received calls from the store's general manager and from another person, according to the report.

00:06:30.000 Arriving on the scene, Delaware State Police retrieved security camera footage from the store and interviewed the store management.

00:06:35.000 The FBI also responded to the scene.

00:06:37.000 At the time, the FBI was still monitoring Hunter Biden because of the tax investigation.

00:06:42.000 So, apparently, All of this is now going to result in Hunter Biden not going to jail and getting probation for a couple years, which sounds like just what would happen if Hunter Biden were like, you know, a poor person.

00:06:53.000 If Hunter Biden were a poor, unconnected person, this is probably exactly what would happen to him, is that he would fail to pay his taxes, amounting to $1.2 million for two years.

00:07:01.000 And then he would, you know, be high while signing gun forms and then have his girlfriend throw away the gun and then activate Secret Service to clean it up.

00:07:08.000 And he would be charged with a diversionary program.

00:07:11.000 That is probably exactly what would happen if it were you.

00:07:14.000 That's precisely what would happen.

00:07:16.000 So, you know, the DOJ does the right thing in charging Hunter Biden, but then they give him a sweet plea deal, which is the way that it works.

00:07:22.000 The thing is that you remember that Joe Biden has been lying about this for years.

00:07:25.000 So Joe Biden was asked, like, in 2021, what's the deal with Hunter?

00:07:28.000 He's like, Hunter is the smartest person I know, and he's never done anything wrong.

00:07:32.000 Sir, there is something personal that's affecting you.

00:07:34.000 Your son, while there's no ties to you, could be charged by your Department of Justice.

00:07:38.000 How will that impact your presidency?

00:07:41.000 First of all, my son's done nothing wrong.

00:07:43.000 I trust him.

00:07:44.000 I have faith in him.

00:07:46.000 And it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.

00:07:50.000 Well, apparently Hunter is going to have to tell his dad something, because apparently he did a lot of things wrong.

00:07:55.000 Just your quick reminder, you, a law-abiding gun-owning American citizen, you're a danger to the Republic, according to Joe Biden.

00:08:01.000 You're a problem, because you have an AR-15 in your house.

00:08:04.000 That's something that you should not be able to have, because you are a bad person, even though you're law-abiding and you've done nothing wrong.

00:08:09.000 Hunter Biden, being a crack addict who bought a gun by falsely filling out a form, and then his girlfriend taking that gun and tossing it in a garbage can across the street from a high school, Hunter Biden, well, you know, it's a minor charge.

00:08:21.000 It's going to be fun to watch as the media say that now avoiding taxes is a minor charge.

00:08:25.000 Gun felonies are now minor charges because, of course, Hunter Biden is involved in all of that.

00:08:30.000 And so it's no longer a very big deal.

00:08:32.000 And it's not enough here for the DOJ to charge Hunter Biden.

00:08:36.000 I mean, they theoretically should throw the book at him the same way that they are presumably going to throw the book at Donald Trump.

00:08:42.000 Either you throw the book at everybody or you throw the book at nobody.

00:08:44.000 That's not the way that this works.

00:08:46.000 So, you know, people on the left are now going to use this as the predicate to suggest that the Justice Department is doing the fair thing.

00:08:52.000 After all, they charged Hunter Biden, did they not?

00:08:55.000 Which means the charges against Donald Trump are now fully justified.

00:08:58.000 This ignores the fact that Hunter Biden is in fact the son of the current President of the United States and not the current President of the United States himself, who is currently under investigation for mishandling classified material.

00:09:06.000 It also ignores the fact that the deeper investigation into Joe Biden by the DOJ Would not be involving Hunter and his crack cocaine use while buying a gun.

00:09:14.000 The deeper investigation would involve, you know, maybe bribery.

00:09:18.000 Like that's the thing people want to know the details about, not this particular case.

00:09:22.000 They're not throwing the book at Hunter, they're letting him off the hook.

00:09:25.000 Now the case to be made, to be fair, for Hunter's legal team is that they cooperated with law enforcement.

00:09:29.000 That as soon as this happened, Hunter Biden did the thing he's supposed to do and he shut up and he said to his legal team, go clean this up for me.

00:09:34.000 And then they did that.

00:09:35.000 Now, does that seem a little corrupt, given the fact that, again, his dad is the President of the United States?

00:09:39.000 Doesn't seem, like, amazing.

00:09:41.000 But it does demonstrate the power of cooperating with federal law enforcement in these cases, as opposed to working at odds with them.

00:09:47.000 Now, it doesn't mean that the federal law enforcement will always do what they are supposed to do.

00:09:50.000 Again, I have grave suspicions, and I'm very cynical about the outcome of this particular case.

00:09:56.000 But when juxtaposed with the behavior of President Trump, who is not taking the advice of his legal team, that's not a smart strategy, as it turns out.

00:10:04.000 Again, two things can be true at once.

00:10:05.000 DOJ can be deeply affected by politics and corruption.

00:10:09.000 And also, the smart thing to do, listen to your lawyers.

00:10:11.000 Speaking of which, Donald Trump was on Bret Baier's show last night.

00:10:15.000 I've said it before, I'll say it again.

00:10:16.000 Worst job in the world, Donald Trump's lawyer.

00:10:18.000 Very, very rough job. 0.90

00:10:19.000 Because if you are a lawyer, the first thing that you tell your client, particularly in a criminal case, but it's true in civil cases also, is shut up.

00:10:26.000 Now, shut is like the very first rule.

00:10:28.000 And by the way, it's not just lawyers who know this.

00:10:29.000 If you've ever watched a cop show and you've ever seen a criminal defendant being taken into custody by the police, the first thing the lawyer shouts to them is, be quiet, don't say anything.

00:10:38.000 One of the aspects of not saying things is don't go on national TV and say things about an ongoing criminal case.

00:10:46.000 Because very likely you're going to say something that ends up in the criminal indictment.

00:10:50.000 If you're his lawyers, you must have been pulling your hair out last night.

00:10:52.000 He was on Bret Baier's show.

00:10:53.000 And this does demonstrate not only that Donald Trump is not a good legal client, but it really leads to some serious issues for Donald Trump in the primary election.

00:11:01.000 Okay, so all of this comes out in the Bret Baier interview.

00:11:03.000 So it begins with Trump saying he doesn't have any worries about the federal indictment at all.

00:11:07.000 Which, again, maybe that's true, maybe that's not, but here's the beginning of the interview.

00:11:11.000 Mike Pence had documents that were classified.

00:11:14.000 And he turned them over.

00:11:15.000 No, he didn't turn them over.

00:11:16.000 He got caught.

00:11:17.000 His lawyers found some documents and then he turned them over.

00:11:21.000 Why did he have them?

00:11:23.000 He shouldn't be saying that because he had classified documents.

00:11:26.000 And immediately they said, oh, that's OK.

00:11:28.000 And I suppose it's going to be OK with Biden, too, even though he has them in Chinatown, even though he has them in Delaware and probably a hundred times more than I have.

00:11:38.000 So you're not worried about this case?

00:11:41.000 Based on the law, zero.

00:11:44.000 Zero.

00:11:45.000 Presidential Records Act, plus the Clinton case, which was won by Clinton as president because he took tapes of leaders in his socks.

00:11:59.000 Uh, zero.

00:12:00.000 Okay.

00:12:01.000 Zero.

00:12:01.000 And every good lawyer has said it, and you've seen that.

00:12:04.000 Every good lawyer has said that.

00:12:06.000 Okay, so first of all, not true.

00:12:08.000 Okay, when he says that all these other people, they had classified documents, that part is 100% true, and he's totally right about that.

00:12:13.000 And if we actually read the statute to mean what the statute means, a lot of people would go to jail for mishandling classified information.

00:12:19.000 The problem for Trump is, again, the obstruction charge.

00:12:22.000 Right, that's the real problem.

00:12:22.000 And by the way, Hillary should have gone to jail for the obstruction charge.

00:12:25.000 It's very weird seeing a lot of the same people who say that Hillary should have gone to jail for the obstruction charge now flipping and saying that Trump should not be tried for the same charge.

00:12:34.000 Not because, like me, you believe there should be one standard of justice, and if you're gonna let somebody off, you gotta let everybody off.

00:12:39.000 But because the idea is that if Trump does it, it's okay, and if Hillary does it, it's not okay.

00:12:43.000 That's not right.

00:12:44.000 Okay?

00:12:44.000 It's either wrong or it's right.

00:12:45.000 But in any case, when he is talking about the Presidential Records Act, when he says all good lawyers believe what he is saying here, that's not true.

00:12:51.000 He's apparently citing Tom Fitton, who's the head of Judicial Watch.

00:12:53.000 I know Tom.

00:12:54.000 Tom's a really good guy.

00:12:55.000 Tom is not a lawyer.

00:12:56.000 The reality is, according to Annie McCarthy, who is a former federal prosecutor, the Presidential Records Act explicitly excludes agency records from the definition of presidential records.

00:13:06.000 In other words, the president doesn't have the simple ability to simply say, all records are now presidential records.

00:13:10.000 A CIA record comes across his desk, now it's magically a presidential record.

00:13:13.000 That is not correct.

00:13:14.000 So the Presidential Records Act does not apply in this particular case.

00:13:19.000 Intelligence reports compiled by the Defense Intelligence Agency, CIA, NSA, FBI, other U.S.

00:13:27.000 national security agencies are agency records.

00:13:29.000 They are not presidential records by definition.

00:13:32.000 The PRA excludes agency records from its coverage.

00:13:35.000 And then you see him cite the so-called Clinton sock drawer case.

00:13:40.000 And the Clinton sock drawer case is a little bit different.

00:13:44.000 So there's a lawyer who wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal talking about the Clinton case.

00:13:49.000 That case involved non-classified tape recordings that Clinton made with historian Taylor Branch in anticipation of compiling a history of his presidency.

00:13:58.000 Bekashra says those are presidential records, but they are presidential records, and he should have archived them with the National Archives.

00:14:04.000 And instead, he hid them in a White House sock drawer until his term ended, and then he took them with him.

00:14:08.000 But NARA had civil law authority under the Presidential Records Act.

00:14:12.000 Did they?

00:14:12.000 To compel the turning over of the tapes.

00:14:14.000 Or did they not?

00:14:15.000 Those were presidential records.

00:14:16.000 These are not presidential records, so the case doesn't really apply.

00:14:19.000 The point here is that Trump should not be involving himself in abstruse legal discussions.

00:14:23.000 This is what you hire a lawyer to do.

00:14:25.000 Even I, a lawyer, whenever I'm involved, our company is involved in legal cases.

00:14:29.000 You know what we do?

00:14:30.000 We hire lawyers! 0.90

00:14:31.000 It's like the first thing you do.

00:14:32.000 You're the former president of the United States.

00:14:34.000 I'm sure you have thousands of lawyers on your Rolodex.

00:14:37.000 Just call one.

00:14:39.000 Just call one and listen to them.

00:14:41.000 And the reason I'm upset about this is because, again, if you're rooting for Trump to win the nomination and then win the presidency, you know what he needs to do?

00:14:47.000 Avoid jail.

00:14:48.000 You know what he needs to do?

00:14:50.000 Not dump out all of his dirty laundry in public in the belief that somehow this is going to benefit him.

00:14:57.000 As I've said before, first of all, every day you spend talking about Trump and his documents and election 2020s, today you're not talking about Joe Biden, who's the actual subject of the 2024 election.

00:15:06.000 But beyond that, it demonstrates a lack of focus not to be talking about how you're going to win in 2024.

00:15:11.000 Instead, you're out there essentially handing materials to the prosecutor.

00:15:15.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:15:16.000 By the way, a judge has now set an August 14th trial date for Donald Trump in the classified documents case, apparently.

00:15:22.000 So they're moving fast on this particular case.

00:15:25.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:16:29.000 Okay, so now we get to the actual meat of the interview with Brett Baier.

00:16:32.000 And we've already set the predicate with the criminal charges that he's facing.

00:16:35.000 So, Trump is asked by Brett Baier, why didn't you just give the boxes back?

00:16:39.000 Now again, one of the charges in this case is that Donald Trump obstructed justice by telling his lawyers to turn all of the material over to the FBI and telling them that they had, and then he was simultaneously apparently shifting boxes around so his own lawyers did not know that he had classified material.

00:16:53.000 And here is Trump just saying it.

00:16:55.000 I have every right to have those boxes.

00:16:58.000 This is purely a Presidential Records Act.

00:17:01.000 This is not a criminal thing.

00:17:03.000 In fact, the New York Times, of all, had a story just the other day that the only way NARA could ever get this stuff, this back, would be, please, please, please, could we have it back?

00:17:15.000 And they asked for it.

00:17:16.000 Because they have no... We were talking.

00:17:18.000 They did ask for it.

00:17:19.000 No.

00:17:19.000 They said, can you give the documents back?

00:17:21.000 And we were talking.

00:17:22.000 Okay, so you said you didn't want to hand it over to NARA, right?

00:17:26.000 And then, Bret Baier's like, so why do you have it in the first place?

00:17:28.000 Why not just give it back to them?

00:17:29.000 You're accused of shifting around the boxes.

00:17:31.000 I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out.

00:17:35.000 I don't want to hand that over to NARA yet.

00:17:36.000 Okay, so you said you didn't want to hand it over to NARA, right?

00:17:39.000 And then, Brett Baier's like, so why do you have it in the first place?

00:17:41.000 Why not just give it back to them?

00:17:43.000 Like, why are you, you're accused of shifting around the boxes.

00:17:45.000 What's the story?

00:17:46.000 You're quoted on the recording saying the document was secret, adding that you could

00:17:51.000 have declassified it while you were president, but quote, now I can't.

00:17:55.000 You know this is still secret, highly confidential.

00:17:58.000 And the indictment cites the recording and the testimony from people in the room saying you showed it to people there that day.

00:18:04.000 So you say on this, on tape, that you can't declassify it, so why have it?

00:18:08.000 When I said, when I said that I couldn't declassify it now, that's because I wasn't president.

00:18:14.000 I never made any bones about that.

00:18:16.000 When I'm not president, I can't declassify it.

00:18:18.000 And that's what you said.

00:18:19.000 You didn't declassify it.

00:18:21.000 I said no, no.

00:18:22.000 I said I couldn't.

00:18:22.000 You could have declassified it.

00:18:24.000 But that wasn't a document, Brett.

00:18:25.000 There was no document.

00:18:26.000 That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things.

00:18:32.000 Okay, so now he's trying to claim the papers that he was waving around.

00:18:34.000 So he's claiming two separate things in these clips.

00:18:36.000 Thing number one that he's claiming is, yes, I took the boxes and I was moving them around.

00:18:42.000 That's the thing they're charging you with, man.

00:18:43.000 His lawyers are like, what are you doing?

00:18:46.000 He's like, yeah, I moved them out.

00:18:47.000 They had my stuff in them.

00:18:48.000 Why shouldn't I?

00:18:50.000 Because they're literally accusing you of doing that thing, and then they subpoenaed those documents, and then they raided your house, and they found classified documents in the boxes that you were moving around.

00:18:58.000 Don't say the thing!

00:18:59.000 Don't do it!

00:19:00.000 And then, he says the other thing, right?

00:19:02.000 He's asked about the transcript, or he is saying that he could have declassified the documents, but he didn't, and he's waving around papers.

00:19:08.000 And now he's claiming those are just random papers, that he's like waving around a Newsweek article or something.

00:19:12.000 And he's saying, I could have declassified, but I didn't declassify this paper.

00:19:15.000 Okay, again, all of this...

00:19:18.000 You can't compel a defendant to appear on the stand in his own criminal trial.

00:19:22.000 There's a right against self-incrimination in a criminal trial.

00:19:25.000 You know what there's no right to?

00:19:26.000 Not admitting outside interviews with Brett Baier to the court records.

00:19:30.000 If you think Jack Smith's prosecutorial team wasn't watching the interview last night and taking clips of this and then just getting ready to enter this into the prosecutorial record, you got it wrong.

00:19:39.000 It's just, it's If you root for Donald Trump, if you're a fan of Donald Trump, you have to be thinking this is not a smart move.

00:19:47.000 What is the move here?

00:19:48.000 Why is this smart?

00:19:49.000 Why are you going on Bret Baier's show and then spilling all this out?

00:19:52.000 Why don't you just say it's an ongoing legal case and my lawyers are handling it?

00:19:55.000 Why?

00:19:55.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second, because the interview didn't end there.

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00:21:01.000 So the question is going to be, how does he turn this around?

00:21:03.000 Okay, so then Trump gets into matters of the election, specifically with Bayer.

00:21:10.000 And Bear asks him a pretty obvious question, which is, you're now at war with pretty much everybody who used to be in your administration.

00:21:15.000 Why do you keep hiring bad people? 0.88

00:21:18.000 You called your first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, dumb as a rock, and your first defense secretary, James Mattis, the world's most overrated general. 0.96

00:21:26.000 You called your White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, milquetoast, and multiple times you've referred to your transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, as Mitch McConnell's China-loving wife. 0.96

00:21:36.000 So...

00:21:37.000 Why did you hire all of them in the first place?

00:21:39.000 Because I hired ten to one that were fantastic.

00:21:42.000 We had a great economy.

00:21:44.000 We had phenomenal people in charge of the economy.

00:21:47.000 We had phenomenal people in the military.

00:21:49.000 I'm not a fan of Millie and I'm not a fan of certain of the television people.

00:21:53.000 But I knocked out ISIS. 1.00

00:21:54.000 I defeated ISIS.

00:21:55.000 They said, Mattis, it would take three years and I don't think we can do it.

00:21:59.000 I did it in a period of like four weeks.

00:22:01.000 There's a lot of people who praise you for your policies.

00:22:04.000 I just said that.

00:22:05.000 That's true.

00:22:05.000 Well, I mean, you just went through a list.

00:22:07.000 But don't forget, for every one you say, I had 10 that love us.

00:22:11.000 Okay, but everybody in his cabinet he's been ripping on, so he has no answer to why he hires bad people, which is a problem when you are staffing up an administration that is facing down the deep state as he says they are.

00:22:21.000 And by the way, he's not wrong about that.

00:22:23.000 Like, wouldn't staffing be kind of an issue going forward to a 2024 election win?

00:22:27.000 Like, even if he wins, he's going to have to staff up.

00:22:29.000 Does his history in staffing make you sanguine about how well that's going to go?

00:22:33.000 And then Brett Baier hits him with the 2020 election.

00:22:36.000 He says, basically, listen, you lost the 2020 election.

00:22:39.000 And Trump, of course, is never going to admit that he lost the 2020 election.

00:22:42.000 But that begs the question, if you didn't lose the 2020 election, how do you plan to un-lose the next election?

00:22:48.000 What do you say to that female independent suburban voter who feels that way, to win her back? 1.00

00:22:53.000 First of all, I won in 2020 by a lot, okay?

00:22:56.000 Let's get that straight.

00:22:58.000 I won in 2020.

00:22:59.000 And if you look at all of the tapes, if you look at everything that you want to look at, you take a look at Truth to Vote, where they have people stuffing the ballot boxes on tapes, or let's go to Recent.

00:23:10.000 Well, wait a minute, let's go to Recent.

00:23:12.000 FBI, Twitter.

00:23:14.000 Let's go to recent.

00:23:14.000 The 51 agents.

00:23:16.000 All corrupt stuff, Brett.

00:23:17.000 Understand about the Hunter Biden.

00:23:19.000 All fair things.

00:23:20.000 That's cheating when they lost the 2020 election.

00:23:23.000 Okay, so here is the problem for Trump.

00:23:25.000 How is he going to win?

00:23:26.000 Okay, if you're somebody who wants to see the deep state defeated, if you want to see Donald Trump's enemies defeated, if you look to someone elected who's going to pardon Trump, if he actually ends up criminally convicted in the state of Florida, Then what's the plan?

00:23:40.000 That's the big question going forward.

00:23:41.000 Who has discipline?

00:23:42.000 Who has a chance to win?

00:23:44.000 Now, I'm not saying Trump has no chance to win.

00:23:45.000 If he's nominated, of course he has a chance to win.

00:23:47.000 I mean, you're always going to have a 30% shot at winning because this is basically a two-party system.

00:23:52.000 With that said, is the kind of discipline that he is not showing during this interview going to benefit him in a race against Joe Biden?

00:23:58.000 A race that should be about Joe Biden?

00:24:00.000 Because again, Joe Biden is a target-rich environment.

00:24:02.000 He's a target-rich environment.

00:24:04.000 And the question is going to be, can this be an election about Joe Biden when Donald Trump is in the race.

00:24:10.000 I find it hard to believe it can.

00:24:11.000 Donald Trump is way more interesting.

00:24:12.000 He says things that are way more fascinating.

00:24:14.000 He says things that are off the wall.

00:24:16.000 He's a fascinating person.

00:24:18.000 Donald Trump is just from a media perspective and from a voter perspective.

00:24:21.000 All focus will be on Donald Trump.

00:24:22.000 If you have an option to talk with your friends about Trump or talk with your friends about Biden, who are you going to talk about?

00:24:28.000 So what does that mean?

00:24:29.000 It means it takes an uber-disciplined campaign to make the 2024 election about Joe Biden and not about the Republican candidate.

00:24:35.000 The media are focused full-time on making this about the Republican candidate.

00:24:37.000 Does that task become easier or harder for them if Donald Trump is the nominee?

00:24:42.000 I've begged, honest to God, I've begged Donald Trump's team to be more disciplined, to focus in.

00:24:50.000 I wish he had done so in 2020.

00:24:51.000 He'd be president again.

00:24:53.000 I voted for him in 2020.

00:24:54.000 I supported him in 2020.

00:24:56.000 I'd support him again if he's the nominee in 2024.

00:24:59.000 But like, some discipline would be good, and some listening to your lawyers, like...

00:25:04.000 It's very frustrating from the perspective of someone who would like to see Joe Biden not be the president of the United States anymore.

00:25:09.000 Speaking of which, there are many reasons why I would like to see Joe Biden not be president of the United States anymore.

00:25:13.000 One of those reasons is because he's about to surrender to China.

00:25:16.000 So here's the thing.

00:25:16.000 China is actually in a very weak global position.

00:25:19.000 That's being hidden by the cowardice of the Americans and the cowardice of the Europeans. 0.95

00:25:23.000 But the reality is that China is in, they're in a demographic death spiral.

00:25:28.000 Their R-rate, their reproduction rate in China is really, really low.

00:25:31.000 Their fertility rate is currently 1.28 birds per woman, which means that they are going to have their population probably cut in half by about 2060.

00:25:39.000 They're in a state of declining population.

00:25:43.000 Their economy is built on the back of young workers.

00:25:47.000 Those young workers are not going to exist thanks to their fertility crisis. 1.00

00:25:50.000 Their entire economy is built on the back of foreign debt.

00:25:53.000 They've taken out an enormous amount of debt.

00:25:56.000 They've created entire shadow cities so that they can suck wealth away from their citizens.

00:26:01.000 They have no intent on repaying.

00:26:03.000 Their economy is going to stagnate.

00:26:04.000 It's already stagnating.

00:26:05.000 In fact, according to the New York Times, investment in China has stagnated this spring after a flurry of activity in late winter.

00:26:11.000 Exports are shrinking.

00:26:12.000 Fewer and fewer new housing projects are being started.

00:26:14.000 Prices are falling.

00:26:15.000 More than one in five young people is unemployed.

00:26:18.000 China has tried many fixes over the last few years when its economy had flagged, like heavy borrowing to pay for roads and rail lines.

00:26:24.000 And it's been huge sums on testing and quarantines during the pandemic.

00:26:27.000 Extra stimulus spending now, with borrowed money, would spur a burst of activity but pose a difficult choice for policymakers already worried about the accumulated debt.

00:26:34.000 I mean, here's the thing with China. 0.99

00:26:35.000 China's actual debt-to-GDP ratio is like 200-something percent.

00:26:38.000 No one ever talks about the systemic debt in China.

00:26:39.000 It's extraordinarily high.

00:26:41.000 China needs to right its economy, but there's no actual way for them to do that because Xi Jinping has been not opening the Chinese economy.

00:26:47.000 He's afraid that if he were to continue to do so, the Chinese people might eventually want political reforms and throw him out of power.

00:26:55.000 So instead, he's basically chosen autarky.

00:26:57.000 We're going to close all of our borders, we're going to produce everything domestically, and we're going to sink our own economy in the process.

00:27:03.000 And the only way that we're going to make up for that is militarism.

00:27:06.000 Which is why he's gotten very expansionist about, for example, Hong Kong, which used to be a major trading center that generated enormous revenue for the Chinese government.

00:27:13.000 He's like, I'd rather just take that place over directly, as opposed to having the possibility that maybe they're going to push for more democratic change.

00:27:19.000 Even if it means economic suffering.

00:27:21.000 The same thing, presumably, is true in Taiwan.

00:27:23.000 It's the reason why they've become very, very threatening toward the Republic of Taiwan.

00:27:28.000 With China in a very weak position, this is where you actually want to keep the pressure on.

00:27:32.000 This is where you want to start reshoring a lot of the business that's being done in China.

00:27:38.000 It is where, for example, you would like to keep the military pressure on by building up the American navies that we have the capacity to break a blockade of Taiwan should China choose to try and impose one.

00:27:48.000 Now would be a good time to isolate China on the world stage by cutting bilateral trade agreements with all of the Southeastern Asian nations. 1.00

00:27:55.000 Now would be an excellent time to do all those things.

00:27:57.000 Instead, the Biden administration is trying the strategy of appeasement with the Chinese.

00:28:03.000 And it's not going to end well.

00:28:05.000 So yesterday, Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State, he traveled over to China and met Xi Jinping.

00:28:09.000 Look at the body language, first of all, in this meeting right here.

00:28:12.000 So here is Blinken walking in.

00:28:14.000 He's the Secretary of State meeting Winnie the Pooh, the Chinese leader here, Xi Jinping.

00:28:19.000 You see him walking in?

00:28:21.000 She's like, I can't even believe I have to meet with this guy. 1.00

00:28:23.000 Look at his schmuck. 0.99

00:28:24.000 Blinken looks very eager to be there. 0.99

00:28:29.000 Blinken is sitting, you know, straight up looking very nervous.

00:28:31.000 And she looks pretty comfortable.

00:28:32.000 I mean, this is...

00:28:36.000 Xi knows where the power in this relationship is, despite the fact that the United States is by orders of magnitude more powerful than China.

00:28:42.000 And the notion that China is an actual competitor on the world stage for the United States in terms of like, oh man, they could overcome our economy. 0.77

00:28:48.000 No, they couldn't.

00:28:49.000 Their per capita GDP in China is really, really, really low.

00:28:53.000 Everybody likes to talk about the combined GDP, but that's because they have tons and tons of people.

00:28:56.000 The per capita GDP of China right now is approximately $12,500.

00:29:00.000 Per capita GDP of the United States right now is approximately $70,000.

00:29:06.000 We are orders of magnitude more powerful than China, economically speaking.

00:29:09.000 In terms of our military, way more sophisticated than the Chinese military.

00:29:13.000 Way more.

00:29:14.000 But instead, the Blinken-Biden team has decided to appease.

00:29:19.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, China and the United States took steps to halt the downward spiral in relations, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken meeting Chinese leader Xi Jinping, though the two powers might have trouble keeping their global rivalry from swamping the tentative rapprochement.

00:29:31.000 During two days of meetings in Beijing, Blinken and senior Chinese foreign policy officials agreed to more high-level talks, continuing the thaw after months of near-frozen contacts.

00:29:39.000 They also promised to find common ground on increasing flights between the two countries and combating the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

00:29:44.000 Now remember, A ton of the fentanyl that is pouring into the United States and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans is coming directly from China.

00:29:50.000 It's going from China into Mexico and then into the United States.

00:29:54.000 The COVID virus that shut down the world for two years was directly the Chinese government unleashing that thing on the world. 0.99

00:30:01.000 They knew it was there. 0.54

00:30:02.000 They knew it was in Wuhan and they decided that they would rather cover their own asses by unleashing it on the world than actually prevent it from escaping China. 0.94

00:30:09.000 And yet the Biden administration is playing all of this down.

00:30:13.000 Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Xi blessed the fledgling momentum in ties, granting Blinken a much-anticipated audience on Monday.

00:30:19.000 What do you mean, granting Blinken an audience?

00:30:21.000 Who the hell is Xi Jinping, an authoritarian dictator, to grant an audience to the Secretary of State of the most powerful country in world history?

00:30:29.000 How about we grant Xi an audience? 0.62

00:30:30.000 How about it should work the other way around?

00:30:33.000 No apparent breakthroughs occurred on the range of contentious issues that have sent ties plummeting from U.S.

00:30:36.000 support for Taiwan and restrictions on technology exports to China to Beijing's close relations with Moscow.

00:30:42.000 Blinken said he raised concerns about Chinese intelligence activities in Cuba.

00:30:46.000 And they were hoping to establish some sort of military communications channel between the countries to prevent some sort of misunderstanding over Taiwan, right?

00:30:52.000 where China makes a move, it's a military exercise, but we think it's an actual attack on Taiwan,

00:30:56.000 and so we respond in kind.

00:30:57.000 And China's like, nah, we're not doing that.

00:30:58.000 We're not gonna coordinate with you at all, because if we feel like invading Taiwan,

00:31:01.000 we'll damn well invade Taiwan. 0.52

00:31:02.000 Meanwhile, Antony Blinken is going out there and saying the quiet part out loud.

00:31:05.000 He says, we don't support Taiwan's independence.

00:31:07.000 So this has been longstanding US policy.

00:31:09.000 Longstanding US policy has been strategic ambiguity on Taiwan.

00:31:12.000 What would we do if China actually invaded Taiwan?

00:31:14.000 We don't know.

00:31:15.000 And the reason we say that is because we don't want China to think that they can get away with an invasion of Taiwan.

00:31:21.000 It has also been longstanding U.S.

00:31:22.000 policy since the Kissinger era that the United States will not openly support independence for the Republic of Taiwan because that might precipitate war.

00:31:29.000 At the same time, when you say to Xi Jinping, we do not, when you say openly and routinely, we do not support Taiwanese independence, Xi Jinping is going to find a pretext to now blockade the island.

00:31:39.000 Right, what he's now going to do is he's going to say, it looks like the Taiwanese are about to declare independence.

00:31:43.000 You know what we need?

00:31:43.000 A naval blockade to prevent that.

00:31:45.000 And even you, the United States, you said you don't support independence for Taiwan.

00:31:48.000 That's the next move that's going to happen over the course of the next couple years.

00:31:51.000 Bank on it.

00:31:51.000 Here's Anthony Blinken saying this stuff.

00:31:54.000 On Taiwan, I reiterated the long-standing U.S.

00:31:57.000 one China policy.

00:31:59.000 That policy has not changed.

00:32:01.000 It's guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint communiques, the six assurances.

00:32:07.000 We do not support Taiwan independence.

00:32:09.000 We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.

00:32:13.000 We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences.

00:32:18.000 We remain committed to meeting our responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act, including making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.

00:32:27.000 Okay, now, he can continue saying that as much as he wants, but again, what Xi Jinping is going to take away from that is, if I just claim that the Taiwanese are moving toward independence, what exactly are the Americans going to do about it?

00:32:38.000 Meanwhile, Blinken gave some happy talk about China's economic interests being tied to our own, which is strange, because obviously, Xi Jinping disagrees.

00:32:46.000 We have many American companies that I met with, or at least their representatives here, including the Chamber of Commerce, that continue to be very interested business year and it's profoundly in our interest.

00:33:00.000 I also noted to our our hosts that China's broad economic success is also in our interest.

00:33:11.000 Um we have done a remarkable job rebounding from from COVID and having a growing economy.

00:33:18.000 Very low unemployment.

00:33:20.000 Um We also benefit tremendously when there is growth and progress in other countries, especially one of the world's largest economies. 0.89

00:33:30.000 By the way, you want to know why so many foreign countries look at the United States and they say you're a hypocrite when you talk about human rights?

00:33:35.000 It's because of this kind of stuff.

00:33:36.000 You'll unleash the ambassador to Hungary to jabber about LGBTQ rights in Hungary, where they actually have a democracy.

00:33:42.000 And then you'll go to China and you'll simp for the Chinese regime talking about how amazing it would be if they had great economic ties.

00:33:49.000 What about the lines of communication between militaries?

00:33:52.000 There have been close calls.

00:33:52.000 operation. Unfortunately, none of that happened during this trip. All that all that happened

00:33:56.000 is basically he looked like he was prostrating himself before Xi Jinping.

00:34:00.000 What about the lines of communication between militaries?

00:34:03.000 There have been close calls. How dangerous is it that you're leaving Beijing without direct

00:34:07.000 assurances that these lines of communication will open when the tactics appear to be

00:34:12.000 growing bolder?

00:34:13.000 It's imperative for for us, and it really should be for them to restore these military

00:34:18.000 to military channels of communication for exactly the reason that you cited.

00:34:22.000 We've seen a couple of very dangerous incidents in the last couple of weeks with their ships driving much too close to ours, their planes doing the same thing.

00:34:30.000 That's the quickest path to an inadvertent conflict.

00:34:34.000 I don't have any progress to report on re-establishing the military-to-military channels.

00:34:38.000 China seems to be placing the blame on the U.S.

00:34:42.000 for the downturn in relations.

00:34:43.000 Even he's reporting from Beijing.

00:34:44.000 He's like, yeah, I mean, she was basically taken, Blinken, to the woodshed here.

00:34:47.000 China seems to be placing the blame on the US for the downturn in relations.

00:34:53.000 Not necessarily surprising, but what do you see there?

00:34:56.000 Well, there was an almost scolding tone from the Chinese president to Secretary

00:35:01.000 Blinken in advance of their meeting, in which he said something along the lines

00:35:06.000 of, I hope you, Secretary Blinken, and America will do more to improve the

00:35:11.000 relationship clearly.

00:35:13.000 Putting the onus on the U.S.

00:35:15.000 and therefore implying it's the U.S.

00:35:16.000 that has been the problem here.

00:35:18.000 Now, on the flip side, and as always with these high-stakes, high-level meetings, you have to take the good with the bad, the Chinese president did sit down with the U.S.

00:35:26.000 Secretary of State, and that kind of contact, he of course also met with the foreign minister and other Chinese officials, is progress compared to where we were just a few weeks ago.

00:35:36.000 Oh, progress, is it?

00:35:37.000 It seems so much progress.

00:35:39.000 In just one second, we'll get to the other problems with the Biden administration, including economic problems that are not going to go away first.

00:35:45.000 Now, the fact of the matter is, with four kids and a baby, I got to tell you, last night, I was in charge of the baby for like the last half of the night.

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00:36:47.000 Also, if you're looking for something interesting to watch, check out our new series, What We Saw, hosted by storyteller Bill Whittle.

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00:37:19.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:37:20.000 Speaking of Joe Biden, he's not just blowing it on foreign policy.

00:37:22.000 When it comes to the economy, the United States economy is still in serious trouble.

00:37:26.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, the world's central banks underestimated inflation last year.

00:37:30.000 Across affluent countries, central bankers are sharply lifting inflation forecasts, penciling in further interest rate increases, warning investors interest rates will stay high for some time.

00:37:37.000 Some have set aside plans to keep interest rates on hold.

00:37:40.000 Roughly a year into their campaign against high inflation, policymakers are some way away from being able to achieve victory.

00:37:45.000 So inflation is still a part of the global economy.

00:37:47.000 Thanks in large part to Joe Biden blowing more money into the American economy than ever seen in world history.

00:37:53.000 Meanwhile, there's still a global tax mess that American companies are going to have to face, and that is largely thanks to the Biden administration.

00:37:59.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.-based multinational companies face a slow-brewing tax squeeze over the next few years.

00:38:04.000 Congress is deadlocked over what to do.

00:38:06.000 Companies are going to start paying higher taxes in foreign countries next year under a global minimum tax agreement thanks to the Biden administration trying to cut a 15% global minimum tax, which, again, is really, really bad.

00:38:16.000 We should lower our minimum tax.

00:38:17.000 The following year, the deal will cause U.S.

00:38:19.000 companies to lose domestic tax breaks.

00:38:21.000 In 2026, U.S.

00:38:22.000 taxes on companies' foreign incomes will rise because of long-delayed provisions of the 2017 tax laws, according to Daniel Bund, president of the tax foundation that screws Titan each year.

00:38:33.000 Much of the tax pileup stems from the global minimum tax deal U.S.

00:38:35.000 officials helped negotiate in 2021 as a way to limit corporate tax avoidance.

00:38:41.000 Governments in South Korea, Japan, EU, and U.K.

00:38:42.000 are moving ahead with the deal's 15% tax floor.

00:38:45.000 Swiss voters decide Sunday whether to accept it or not.

00:38:48.000 But the United States isn't implementing the new taxes, igniting consequences for American companies.

00:38:52.000 So again, the taxes, thanks to Joe Biden, are going up on all American companies, which means higher prices for everyone.

00:38:58.000 So that's exciting as well.

00:38:59.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden is being dragged around bodily by other people surrounding him because he is no longer alive.

00:39:04.000 Representative Anna Eshoo, Democrat of California, was caught on tape pulling around Joe Biden physically the other day.

00:39:13.000 There's Gavin Newsom being like, man, I hope he falls over.

00:39:16.000 Gavin Newsom's trailing behind. 0.98

00:39:17.000 This is ridiculous. 0.97

00:39:18.000 Hannah Eshoo's like, look at the old man. 0.98

00:39:20.000 He's like, I'm gonna follow this lady. 0.96

00:39:23.000 Is there pudding?

00:39:24.000 Where are we going?

00:39:25.000 So things are going great.

00:39:27.000 In other news, Andrew Tate has been re-arrested.

00:39:30.000 In Romania, again, we don't know all the evidence in this case, but it is worth noting, since of course he is a very hot topic all the time, according to the BBC, which of course hates Andrew Tate.

00:39:38.000 Controversial influencer Andrew Tate has now been charged in Romania with rape, human trafficking, and forming an organized crime group to sexually exploit women.

00:39:45.000 His brother Tristan and two associates also face charges, all of them denied the allegations.

00:39:50.000 They were first arrested at their home in December, and then in March they were moved from custody to house arrest following a ruling by a Romanian judge.

00:39:56.000 The indictment deposited with the Bucharest court says the defendants formed an organized criminal group in 2021 to commit human trafficking in Romania, but also including in the United States and the UK.

00:40:06.000 It names seven alleged victims who say they were recruited by the Tate brothers through false promises of love and marriage.

00:40:10.000 The alleged victims were later taken to buildings in a county in Romania where they were intimidated, placed under constant surveillance and control, and forced into debt, according to a statement from Romanian prosecutors, and then allegedly forced to take part in pornography, later shared on social media.

00:40:24.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.

00:40:26.000 properties, cars, and more than $300 million in cryptocurrency.

00:40:30.000 A Romanian judge has 60 days to inspect the case files before it can be sent to trial

00:40:34.000 at this point.

00:40:35.000 The Tait brothers are proclaiming their innocence.

00:40:36.000 So we'll keep tabs on that.

00:40:38.000 Of course, Tait has suggested for a long time that the authorities in Romania and elsewhere

00:40:42.000 were out to get him.

00:40:43.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then a quick thing that I hate.

00:40:47.000 So things that I like today.

00:40:50.000 I love the irony of people embracing the woke agenda only to be forced to run away from

00:40:55.000 So now Jamila Jamil, who pretends that she's a member of the LGBTQIA divided by sign community, she is weighing in on an awards show having gender neutral categories because she's afraid that If there are no gender categories anymore, women will be shut out. 1.00

00:41:11.000 So what she's afraid of is men identifying as non-binary and now winning over women. 0.87

00:41:13.000 Wait, but I thought that those are women. 1.00

00:41:15.000 Some of those people are women. 1.00

00:41:16.000 Non-binary is a real status and a minority status.

00:41:17.000 Far more victimized than women. 0.99

00:41:18.000 versus women winning at award shows? 0.99

00:41:21.000 So what she's afraid of is men identifying as non-binary and now winning over women. 0.87

00:41:25.000 Wait, but I thought that those are women. 1.00

00:41:26.000 Some of those people are women. 1.00

00:41:28.000 Non-binary is a real status and a minority status, far more victimized than women.

00:41:31.000 Why should women have a leg up on non-binary people? 1.00

00:41:34.000 This seems really, really cis-normative.

00:41:37.000 Jamilla Jamil.

00:41:38.000 She says, if we now have enough non-binary talent to restructure entire awards shows, which is great, we should add, rather than run the accidental risk of erasing, no?

00:41:45.000 I say this as an audience member, because I'm not going to be nominated for an Oscar anyway.

00:41:48.000 I have no horse in this race.

00:41:51.000 Well, actually, you do have a horse in this race, because you are a woman. 1.00

00:41:54.000 Because you are a woman. 0.99

00:41:55.000 So, fun to see all the members of the left suddenly realize that the rules they've constructed for themselves are garbage. 0.99

00:42:01.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate. 0.91

00:42:07.000 Okay, so, you know body mass index is a pretty crude standard that basically just looks at your weight and your height and then tells you if you might be overweight or obese.

00:42:16.000 And it's not dispositive in every situation, right?

00:42:18.000 BMI doesn't take into account body type sometimes.

00:42:21.000 There are athletes who, for example, have a lot of muscle mass and they're not particularly tall, and their BMI will be quote-unquote off the charts.

00:42:26.000 You'll see that with athletes all the time, and so they have to actually recalibrate your body mass based on your athletic activity.

00:42:31.000 But, as sort of a rough-and-ready guide for whether somebody needs to lose weight, BMI is useful.

00:42:37.000 Well, now the American Medical Association is saying that body mass index is racist.

00:42:43.000 Yup.

00:42:44.000 Because why?

00:42:45.000 Well, it was categorizing too many black and hispanic people as overweight apparently.

00:42:48.000 Now, is it true that there are a bunch of people who are black and hispanic who are not overweight?

00:42:53.000 Who are being categorized as overweight?

00:42:55.000 I'd like to see the evidence on that one.

00:42:58.000 I really would.

00:42:59.000 Because it seems to me that as sort of, again, a rough and ready estimate, BMI is useful.

00:43:03.000 Again, it's not like dispositive.

00:43:04.000 It's not body fat calculator.

00:43:06.000 It's not you going through and looking at the levels of fat in your actual system.

00:43:10.000 It's basically a crude measure of maybe you need to lose weight, but doctors know that.

00:43:13.000 Like, they can look at you and say, you look obese and your BMI is like 30, so probably you're obese.

00:43:19.000 But the AMA says this is no longer good because it might be rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr The new policy was part of the AMA Council on Science and Public Health report, which evaluated the problematic history with BMI and explored alternatives.

00:43:33.000 The report also outlined the harms and benefits of using BMI, and pointed to BMI as an imperfect way to measure body fat in multiple groups, given that it does not account for differences across racial or ethnic groups, sexes, genders, and age span.

00:43:45.000 Given the findings reports, the new policy supports AMA in educating physicians on the issues with BMI and alternative measures for diagnosing obesity.

00:43:53.000 So, they're saying now we need to use more sophisticated measures of measuring body fat, for example.

00:44:00.000 They say that it should be used in conjunction now with other valid measures of risk, such as, but not limited to, measurements of visceral fat, body adiposity index, body composition relative fat mass, waist circumference, genetic metabolic factors.

00:44:11.000 The policy noted BMI is significantly correlated with the amount of fat mass in the general population.

00:44:16.000 But it loses predictability when applied on the individual level, right?

00:44:18.000 That would be the thing that I'm talking about here, where if you're an NFL player and you're a running back and you're 5'9", 200, it's gonna rate you as obese.

00:44:25.000 Okay, but how many of the people actually being rated by BMI are NFL players?

00:44:29.000 Let's be real about this.

00:44:31.000 It's just not giving results to the people is the problem.

00:44:33.000 And we're supposed to pretend that you're not fat when you are fat.

00:44:36.000 A huge percentage of the country is now fat.

00:44:39.000 It is perfectly obvious to everyone that this is the case.

00:44:41.000 That fat is not equally deposited across different groups.

00:44:45.000 It's not equally deposited across men, across women, across age groups, across races.

00:44:49.000 Because when you agglomerate people, very rarely will the statistics be absolutely identical across groups.

00:44:54.000 In pretty much any category.

00:44:55.000 Height, weight, income. 0.82

00:44:59.000 But, because apparently too many black and hispanic people are charting it as fat, the AMA is now going to say that BMI itself is racist. 0.99

00:45:05.000 I'm sorry, this is ridiculous. 0.99

00:45:06.000 It's ridiculous on its face. 0.96

00:45:07.000 How about this? 0.50

00:45:08.000 How about we all eat healthier and we go work out instead of ripping on the metric that is being used as sort of a rough and ready way for doctors to tell you that you need to go work out and stop eating so much cake?

00:45:17.000 The AMA Council on Science and Public Health, here is their statement, quote, So, um, I'm confused.

00:45:21.000 So if you have a BMI of 30 and you're black, does this make you not fat? 0.85

00:45:23.000 because of A, eugenics behind the history of BMI, of the use of BMI for racist exclusion,

00:45:28.000 and C, BMI cutoffs are based on the imagined ideal Caucasian and does not consider a person's gender or ethnicity.

00:45:34.000 So I'm confused.

00:45:37.000 So if you have a BMI of 30 and you're black, does this make you not fat? 0.85

00:45:40.000 Like what exactly are we talking about right here?

00:45:43.000 So one of the things they're pointing out is that there are racial differentials

00:45:46.000 with regard to how BMI works among the different races, which, okay, that's fine, and doctors should know about

00:45:52.000 that. 0.91

00:45:52.000 But the idea that BMI as a tool is racist in and of itself is really, really silly. 0.91

00:45:57.000 According to the Daily Mail, recent evidence suggests that people of Asian descent are just as prone to certain conditions like type 2 diabetes at a lower BMI of around 20, which is considered normal For other races, similarly, diabetes is two to four times more prevalent and more deadly in Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans, and one-size-fits-all screening based on non-Hispanic white bodies is highly likely to result in under-diagnosis of the disease. 0.74

00:46:17.000 Now again, I'm not against doctors using further tools, but the idea that BMI itself is racist is really, really silly.

00:46:26.000 And in the vast majority of cases, what's happening here is not that the AMA is deeply concerned about underdiagnosis of diabetes.

00:46:31.000 What they're really concerned about is, again, too many people from each group are being considered fat under the BMI stats, and that's a problem.

00:46:40.000 In the United States particularly.

00:46:42.000 So, another excuse for quote-unquote fat positivity is probably the best way to read all this.

00:46:46.000 Again, if we're just talking about adding more information to the medical system, I'm totally fine with that.

00:46:51.000 You know, better individual treatment of patients is totally a wonderful and fine thing.

00:46:55.000 But it seems to me that much of what is driving the AMA these days is an attempt to getting good with the woke crowd.

00:47:00.000 Whether it's the AMA declaring that gender-affirming healthcare is actually the gold standard in the United States while Europe basically bans it, or whether you're talking about BMI suddenly becoming racist because there are too many people who are being categorized as overweight or obese from cultures that, or from races that are non-white.

00:47:17.000 Pretty amazing stuff. 0.96

00:47:18.000 Meanwhile, in other things that I hate today, Rashida Tlaib, who is a horrible person and one of the worst idiots in the American Congress, she is now out there urging eco-activists to be much more aggressive, which is just what we need. 0.99

00:47:31.000 We need more people gluing themselves to objects. 0.98

00:47:33.000 Here she was yesterday. 0.99

00:47:35.000 Again, we have to be much more aggressive in regards to fossil fuel expansions.

00:47:40.000 It's already outpaced what the Trump administration was trying to do.

00:47:44.000 You all know already.

00:47:45.000 I know this.

00:47:46.000 This is just, again, me speaking on behalf of my district.

00:47:49.000 We are tired of being studied.

00:47:51.000 We are tired of the task forces.

00:47:53.000 We are tired of commissions.

00:47:55.000 We're done.

00:47:56.000 We're at this point where we're like, we get it.

00:47:58.000 We know this is happening.

00:48:00.000 Oh, so they're done.

00:48:01.000 They're tired.

00:48:01.000 And that's what we need.

00:48:02.000 We need more crazy activism from the eco-activists, which is apparently what is happening with regard to these climate activists, who are now going after Monet paintings. 0.97

00:48:13.000 These clowns. 0.92

00:48:17.000 The situation is urgent, says one. 0.99

00:48:19.000 The pandemic was nothing compared to the climate collapse.

00:48:22.000 What's coming can't even be imagined.

00:48:24.000 This is in Sweden.

00:48:26.000 Children and the elderly will die first. 1.00

00:48:29.000 And we'll suffer non-stop, but no one will make it in time.

00:48:33.000 Ban peat mining and restore the wetlands.

00:48:38.000 Our health is under threat, she says while gluing herself to a Monet painting.

00:48:44.000 How can you do nothing about it? 0.98

00:48:45.000 And everybody's just standing around filming these cretins. 1.00

00:48:47.000 Your security! 0.95

00:48:48.000 What do you do for a living?

00:48:50.000 Okay, here's what we need.

00:48:50.000 We need full-on body tackles of people who do this sort of stuff.

00:48:54.000 That's what we need.

00:48:55.000 Arrest these people, throw them in prison for five years, and then this will stop. 1.00

00:48:59.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

00:49:00.000 And it's insane. 1.00

00:49:01.000 And the notion that if you glue yourself to a painting and shout about the wetlands that this is somehow going to fix the climate is really, really, really stupid. 1.00

00:49:07.000 But, you know, stupidity is what rules in this day and age. 1.00

00:49:11.000 Alrighty folks, the rest of the show is continuing right now. 1.00

00:49:12.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:49:13.000 We'll be getting into the mailbag.

00:49:14.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:49:16.000 Use code SHAPIRO to check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 20, 2023

BREAKING: Hunter Biden CHARGED, Pleads GUILTY...NO Jail Time

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